Repair-It

there was one sentence in this video that immediately explains my thoughts and my beliefs as to why Mike Rowe is such a good person. he said "we need a PR campaign for the jobs that actually exists".

that's could never be more true. every body tells the growing generation to go to college, get a degree. politicians want to give free tuitions, bigger student loans... but, for what? these kids graduate college, with a degree that could potentially give them a 6 digit salary, then they are left with a massive loan to pay off, and no positions for the environment they spent the last four years trying to get. then, they eventually do get a job with a nice salary, spend more than they make, and realize that with their big salary, fancy house, and fancy car, that they made the wrong choice and hate their job and life.

I practically dove right into the workforce (carpenter with very minimal schooling, four year apprentice program that consists of roughly 9 months of college in between work). I make a very tolerable income, with plenty of work to grow yet. above all, I'm doing what I want to do. I do hands on work, I see the final product of my job, and I don't just punch keys and make deadlines for my overdemanding boss. all my co-workers are friendly, none of us are expecting to have a massive house with a Porsche in the garage, none of us spend three hours every morning to be presentable for our job. and above all, at the end of the day. I have a job that will (in my lifetime) never be given to people overseas or be taken over by total automation.

I'm not saying every person needs to work a blue collar job. I'm saying that blue collar jobs exist, 98% of the people I know in a blue collar position love their job (most find retiring a difficult thing to do, because they'll miss the work), and that you can easily make a living doing a blue collar job so long as you put some effort and pride into the job.

btw, I'm not an older person as many people reading this might expect, I'm 20 years old.

The 10% growth in income happens very rarely in professions that require college degrees, also. A relatively small number of people become successful entrepeneurs. And besides, I agree that money is a factor, but the most successful people that I have met, were not always the richest but were the happiest because they loved their job. When I was in the Navy, I met a guy that did Main Condenser tube inspections. We were talking one day and I asked him what he did before this job. He said "I was an astrophysicist at Lawrence Livermore Laboratories." I was a little stunned and asked him why the change of profession. He said "Better pay, better hours, less stress, and I get to work with Navy personnel."

WTF! After trade school you make a decent wage and after that you are capped.. LMAO! well buddy you'd be hard pressed to convince me of that since i've did trade school i got a job starting at about $18/hr after 1 year went up to $28/hr then i switched jobs and started at a base wage of $21/hr which i never seen cause the jobs i done i was avg. $47/hr. and did that for 20 years now i own my own welding company. if thats being capped im all for it.

After the shipyard’s heyday in the 1980s and 1990s, when it produced, on average, four submarines a year, production dropped off and so did employment at EB.

So now there’s talk of a “doughnut hole” in the workforce, with many workers in their late 50s and 60s and a growing group of millennial employees, but few workers in their late 30s or 40s.

Hart said AFL-CIO affiliates throughout the nation are recruiting skilled workers for the Metal Trades Department. But he said it’s sometimes tough to persuade young people to join a union apprenticeship program “because college is the American dream.”

One way EB could help with its labor shortage, Hart said, is to accelerate its own apprenticeship program.

Electric Boat restarted its apprenticeship program in January, in partnership with Three Rivers Community College. There are 30 in the program, six outside machinists, eight inside machinists, five welders, six ship fitters and five sheet metal workers.

Next January, another 30 apprentices will start the program.

Electric Boat also renewed another dormant apprenticeship program in conjunction with the United Auto Workers in January that also has 30 participants.

But it’s training programs outside Electric Boat that may provide more skilled workers.

Why aren’t jobs coming back to the USA?

Dan Holliday, I am an American
Updated Tue

There are a lot of jobs in the US but Americans are raging idiots when it comes to choosing careers. I literally cannot fill beyond 1/4 of the IT roles I’m recruiting for. The Trump administration isn’t going to increase the H-1B allotment (which may be good for Americans, or maybe not), which means that companies won’t be able to fill LITERALLY hundreds of thousands of positions. (Stick a pin in this point, we’ll come back to it in a sec.)

Now, are these the jobs you want? Maybe not. But they’re rotting on the vines. Hard to get into IT? Sure it is. But those jobs exist. Americans were spoon-fed on a diet of, “Follow your dreams and stuff your fucking gullet with Twinkies and Pringles and your life will be great.” And we did that, only the entire job market shifted and we forgot to shift with it.

This means:
- If you want the jobs, you’ll have to assume the risk; people don’t like doing that.
- You’ll have to relocate, not once, but twice or three times. Americans don’t want to do that.
- You’ll have to get the RIGHT degree and not the one you super-duper dreamed of as a kid. Americans don’t want to do that.

Sure. Maybe you know an out-of-work software engineer, but I’m willing to bet my commission check it’s because s/he sucks at it, won’t relocate for a job, or hasn’t bothered to shift her/his skillset to suit the shifts in the market. But whatever. I’ve been beating this drum for about six years. Are you going to tell me, “But Dan! Their kids grew roots.” My response will be, “Kids are resilient. There are kids around the world who’d give their left leg for the privilege to have their parents move for a job and put food on the fucking table.” Don’t want to move? Great. Stay jobless! See if I fucking care. BUT THE JOBS EXIST.

So, those jobs? Well, they won’t go unfilled. Companies have needs that have to be met. Nobody gets to tell them to go bankrupt investing in teaching people skills that they should have learned in college or on their own. So, they’ll just outsource to some company in Bangalore or Manila. And not only will the jobs be lost, but the tax revenue from having those jobs be filled by H-1B candidates in the US will also be gone. Unintended consequences FTW.

There are also loads of tool-and-die jobs that need to be filled. Last I checked, there were a few thousand alone in Cleveland. Then there is the impending retirement of upwards of half of all plumbers and carpenters by the mid 20’s which again, Americans were told, “I worked with my hands so you don’t have to,” and decided that life would be better with a useless degree. (BTW — a good plumber earns six figures.)

Welcome to the ONE industrialized nation on the planet with millions of jobs and nobody who wants to do them. Water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink.